1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optical communication equipment and, more specifically but not exclusively, to the equipment that enables transverse-mode multiplexing (TMM) in optical communication systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention(s). Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
Wireless communication systems with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capabilities increase the overall transmission capacity by exploiting (instead of trying to mitigate) the multi-path delay spread in a wireless channel. More specifically, wireless MIMO improves efficiency and reliability through the use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver. The resulting increase in average throughput is realized at the expense of greater complexity in signal processing and hardware implementation, but not at the expense of additional spectral bandwidth or higher signal power.
In optical communication systems, a MIMO approach to increasing the transmission capacity is feasible, for example, because modal dispersion in a multimode fiber is analogous to multi-path delay in a wireless transmission medium. Consequently, optical MIMO can be leveraged to exploit the inherently high transmission capacity of multimode fibers. However, the hardware for implementing optical MIMO is not yet sufficiently developed.